[Windows Mobile Themes] tobbbie:
This info is for smartphone (WM Standard) but some items may apply also for touch screen devices (WM professional).

Not many things can be personalized on a smartphone, but some can.

The home-screen:

each of these has XML code to define its layout, the utilized plugins, the color scheme and the home-screen background. Many have defined sophisticated home-screens or loaded them from the web.

Sadly when leaving the home-screen, only the color scheme stays, nothing else

The color-schemes may be selected independently from the home-screen and these may also contain a background picture. Selected color schemes are overwriting the relevant settings of the home-screen. Note that only the defined parts in the selected color scheme are used to overwrite previous definitions in the home-screen - so they are complementary in that regard. If a background picture is defined in the color scheme, it takes precedence over the one defined in the home-screen.

An own background picture can be forced and overwrites all above methods.

Selection of a background picture via the settings panel is only possible from the \Application Data\Home directory (where all home-screens are) while defined home-screens or color schemes can reference pictures from any location on the device (usually \windows).

Via the Pictures and Videos application or via File Explorer you can also set any picture as home-screen background. You do this via the context menu and then you are presented a work-flow consisting of selecting the area to use and the transparency level to apply for that picture. Vendor specific other procedures may apply here. Finally all these should create images like: stwater_<x-res>_<y-res>.jpg in the \windows directory and a compressed adapted home-screen in the \Application Data\Home directory.

Start Menu Background: Not often used but powerful, see here for all details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb416463.aspx. In essence you have to add to the current entries:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shell\Rai\:MSStart]
"BKBitmapFile"="<your picture here>"
"BKFlags"=dword:1a
"BKBitmapTransparent"=dword:00ff00ff
"BKBitmapLogPixelsY"=dword:00000083 <- your DPI here '83 = 131 for QVGA
"BKBitmapLogPixelsX"=dword:00000083 <- your DPI here '83 = 131 for QVGA

Most Recent Used Applications Background: Introduced with Sliding Panels backgrounds from WM 6.1 as there is no MRU plugin with sliding panels. Here the same logic applies as for the Startmenu, just use :MSMRULauncher instead of :MSStart

And NO - the settings panels cannot handle a background picture

So why did I tell you this? You can simply align your start menu and MRU launcher with the picture on your home-screen. No need for any offline tools or editing, just do the following:

enter the keys to the registry as given above for start menu and MRU laucher, take care to set the correct DPI. You find the right ones at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\GWE\Display in the values "LogicalPixelsX" and "LogicalPixelsY"

set both the background pictures to "\windows\stwater_<x>_<y>.jpg" so that "<x,y>" matches your resolution

With file explorer or "Pictures and Videos" seek for the BG picture of your current home-screen, usually it is either in \Application Data\Home or in \windows

Set this to be your home-screen picture, choose a value of ~30% transparency in the work-flow.

Check your home-screen and the MRU + Startmenu panels. If you have already a background active you need to restart the device to pick the new ones up.

Now you will see that the selected picture is too pale for the home-screen, so on the settings-home-screen go to the background picture selection and select "standard" again to get your original picture back there.

As long as you are not assigning a new dedicated background picture to the home-screen, the previously created stwater_x_y.jpg stays in the \windows directory and will please you as the MRU and Start menu backgrounds.

Any new background related activity will only require steps 3-7, the registry stays unchanged.